The Tyranny of the Generic: Against Semantic Flattening in Biblical Studies

Introduction: The Modern Bias Against Distinction

A peculiar paradox haunts modern historical-critical scholarship. In its laudable pursuit of objectivity, it often adopts a methodology that imposes its own distinctly modern, and often egalitarian, categories onto ancient worldviews. One of the most subtle yet consequential forms of this imposition is what I introduce as semantic flattening: the practice of grouping disparate entities under a single, generic English term, thereby erasing the very hierarchical and ontological distinctions that gave those entities their specific meaning within their own cultural contexts.

This paper will demonstrate how this methodological flaw operates in two distinct but parallel fields. First, in Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) and Old Testament studies, the work of Michael B. Hundley will serve as a case study for how the indiscriminate use of the term “gods” collapses a carefully constructed cosmos of beings into a flattened pantheon. Second, in New Testament studies, Bart D. Ehrman’s treatment of Christological titles like “Son of Man” will illustrate how a focus on superficial terminological parallels neutralizes the radical, context-shattering claims of the Gospels. Ultimately, I will argue that this modern scholarly trend is intellectually alien to its subject matter, as it stands in direct opposition to the defining characteristic of the Hebrew intellectual tradition: a profound and relentless commitment to making distinctions.

I. Michael Hundley and the Flattening of the Divine Council

Michael Hundley’s monograph Gods in Dwellings (2013) and his related articles offer a valuable, wide-ranging functional analysis of divine presence in the ANE. His work catalogues an impressive array of beings: YHWH, El, Baal, Behemoth, Leviathan, divine messengers, and demons, and examines their roles within cultic spaces. The methodological problem arises from his decision to group this wildly diverse cast of characters under the English catch-all term “gods.” This choice, while seemingly pragmatic, actively obscures the ontological worldview of the ancient Israelites.

The Loss of Hebrew Specificity

By privileging the generic English term, Hundley’s framework diminishes the critical importance of the specific Hebrew vocabulary used by the biblical authors to build their cosmos. These were not interchangeable synonyms but precise ontological labels:
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• • ʾĕlōhîm: This is the quintessential example of necessary nuance. The term’s meaning is radically context-dependent. It can refer to (1) YHWH, the one true God of Israel (Gen 1:1); (2) the divine council of celestial beings who serve YHWH (Psalm 82:1); (3) a foreign deity (Judges 11:24); (4) a disembodied human spirit, as when the witch of Endor summons the elohim of Samuel (1 Sam 28:13); or (5) angels or other powerful spirits. To render all these instances simply as “gods” is to commit an act of interpretive violence.
  • šēdîm (demons) and rəpāʾîm (shades of the dead): These terms designate entities that were acknowledged and often feared, but never worshipped. Deuteronomy 32:17 explicitly contrasts them with God, stating the Israelites sacrificed to “demons that were no gods” (šēdîm lōʾ ʾĕlōah). They occupy a distinct, subordinate, and often adversarial ontological category.
  • Livyāṯān (Leviathan) and Bəhēmôt (Behemoth): These are not deities in a pantheon but primordial chaos monsters, powerful creatures representing cosmic disorder that YHWH alone has the power to subdue (Job 40-41; Psalm 74:14; Isaiah 27:1). They are objects of divine power, not divine worship.

By lumping these distinct categories: the Creator, His celestial court, hostile spirits, and vanquished chaos monsters, under the single heading “gods,” Hundley’s functionalism answers the question “What did these beings do?” at the cost of obscuring the more fundamental question the ancient authors were asking: “What are these beings?” This approach is particularly problematic when scholars like Mark S. Smith (The Early History of God) and Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm) have dedicated their work to meticulously reconstructing the complex hierarchy of the divine council, demonstrating that ancient Israelite religion, even in its early monolatrous stages, was built on a foundation of clear ontological distinctions.

II. Bart Ehrman and the Neutralization of the Son of Man

A parallel form of semantic flattening occurs in the work of Bart Ehrman, particularly in his popular-level books like How Jesus Became God(2014). Ehrman’s method often involves highlighting phenotypic similarities between Jesus’s titles and those used by other figures in Second Temple Judaism, thereby creating the impression that Jesus’s claims were not unique but were merely one variation on a common theme.

His treatment of the title “Son of Man” is the paradigmatic case. Ehrman correctly notes that the Aramaic phrase bar enash can simply mean “a human being” or be used as a circumlocution for “I.” From this, he implies that Jesus’s use of the title was likely non-controversial and was only later imbued with divine significance by the Gospel writers.

Ignoring the Daniel 7 Matrix

This interpretation can only be sustained by systematically downplaying the title’s primary literary and theological matrix: Daniel 7:13-14. In this apocalyptic vision, “one like a son of man” (kəbar ʾĕnāš) is a transcendent, human-like figure who comes on the clouds of heaven and is presented before the Ancient of Days to receive everlasting dominion, glory, and a kingdom. This is not a generic human; this is a celestial, eschatological vice-regent.

Scholars like N.T. Wright (Jesus and the Victory of God) and Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the God of Israel) have forcefully argued that when Jesus uses this title, particularly in contexts involving judgment and future glory (e.g., Mark 14:62: “you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven”), he is explicitly and radically identifying himself with this divine figure from Daniel’s vision.

A Scholarly Consensus Against Flattening

Ehrman’s reductionist view is an outlier when compared to the scholarly consensus. John P. Meier, in his exhaustive A Marginal Jew series, applies the criterion of dissimilarity to show that Jesus’s specific, self-referential, and authoritative use of the title has no clear parallel in other Jewish sources. While others may have used the phrase, no one used it in the way Jesus did: to claim personal authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:10) and to define his own eschatological destiny. Even a scholar like Maurice Casey, who argues for an Aramaic origin, concludes in The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem that Jesus used the phrase to refer to his specific, divinely appointed role.

Ehrman’s method creates a false equivalency. By placing Jesus’s unique, Danielic self-identification on the same plane as generic Aramaic idioms, he flattens a dramatic theological peak into a mundane linguistic molehill, thereby neutralizing the very “scandal of particularity” that the Gospel narratives are constructed to convey.

III. The Ancient Intellectual Ethos of Distinction

The most profound irony in this modern scholarly trend is that it represents a complete inversion of the core intellectual ethos of its subject matter. Ancient Hebrew thought, from its earliest textual layers to its full flowering in rabbinic Judaism, is an enterprise fundamentally dedicated to the making of distinctions.

In the Torah: The Priestly source (P) is a monument to categorization. The entire Levitical system is built upon a complex taxonomy of clean and unclean, holy and common, sacred time and profane time. The act of creation itself in Genesis 1 is presented as a process of separation and distinction: light from darkness, water from water, day from night. The central Jewish ritual of Havdalah literally means “separation” and marks the boundary between the Sabbath and the rest of the week.

In Rabbinic Literature: The Mishnah and the Talmud are exercises in breathtaking dialectical rigor, thriving on minute definitional clarity and the drawing of fine legal and conceptual lines. The entire edifice of rabbinic thought is a testament to the belief that precision, categorization, and distinction are the primary pathways to truth.

This ancient intellectual disposition—a hermeneutic of distinction—is precisely what the modern hermeneutic of flattening undermines. It implicitly treats the ancient authors as though they were incapable of the very ontological rigor their texts everywhere display. It is a form of chronological snobbery that assumes our modern, generic categories are somehow more sophisticated than their ancient, specific ones.

IV. Consequences and a Call for Methodological Precision

This trend is not a harmless academic debate over terminology. It has serious consequences for both scholarship and faith.

In the first place, it is a farcical historical distortion: It actively misrepresents ancient worldviews by imposing a foreign conceptual grid upon them. It prevents us from seeing the ancient cosmos as the ancients saw it—a world teeming with different kinds of beings, arranged in a complex and meaningful hierarchy.

Second, it constitutes a vast theological impoverishment: For readers who approach these texts with religious interest, this flattening erodes an appreciation for their doctrinal depth and sophistication. The radical monotheism of Isaiah and the high Christology of the Gospels lose their revolutionary force when their sharp edges are sanded down by generic labels, which honestly, may have been the entire agenda from the beginning, given Professor Ehrman’s own stated loyalty to hard atheism.

To counter this trend, a methodological reorientation is required:
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• Restore Original-Language Terms: Scholars should prioritize the use of untranslated Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek terms (ʾĕlōhîm, šēdîm, bar enash, etc.), using glosses or footnotes to explain their specific semantic range. This forces both writer and reader to confront the text on its own terms.
• Embrace Ontological Taxonomy: Rather than a single functional category, interpretive frameworks should reflect the explicit ontological taxonomies of the source texts (e.g., Supreme Creator Deity, subordinate divine agents, chaos monsters, adversarial spirits, human agents with divine commissions).
• Practice Epistemological Self-Awareness: Scholars must critically examine whether the claim to “scholarly neutrality” is, in fact, masking an implicit modernist or anti-supernaturalist agenda that favors flat, demythologized landscapes over the richly textured, hierarchical worlds of the original authors.

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Conclusion: To Distinguish Is to Understand

Methodological rigor in biblical and ANE studies is not advanced by semantic homogenization. On the contrary, precision, linguistic, ontological, and cultural, remains the only authentic path toward genuine historical understanding. The frameworks employed by scholars like Hundley and Ehrman, though superficially comprehensive, actively obscure the vital distinctions that lie at the heart of their sources. They do a disservice to the intellectual acuity of the ancient authors and offer a clouded lens to the modern reader.  By their semantic flattening, these professors do, however, surely accomplish their presumed goals of confusing their naive undergraduate students and shaking their faith in orthodox religion.

For those committed to scholarly integrity, the mandate must be to honor the intellectual world of the texts we study. This requires us to abandon the tyranny of the generic and reclaim the ancient, difficult, and ultimately more rewarding task: to distinguish, not dilute. Only then can we begin to appreciate the sharp, beautiful, and demanding world of the text itself.